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            Most people are the slaves of uncontrolled desire.  Gazing into store windows, strolling through the supermarket, watching advertisements on television or the internet, they shoot out so many desire lines at so many things they don’t really want, that it’s little wonder that they can’t bring any of them into manifestation.  If they can, they lose interest in the objects of their desire the minute they possess them.  Then they desire some new object.   

To be a capitalist means tying yourself to an artificial system.  Your sense of well-being and self-esteem go up and down with that system.   While the system is working, you’re in fat city.  When the system fails you get laid off; or your securities plummet; or you’re forced into bankruptcy.   

This system is going to fail.  We can see it happening already in irreversible climatic changes.  Capitalism is a pyramid scheme.  The capitalist system as it is presently constituted is predicated upon the myth that it can continue to rip off the earth and its people forever.  This isn’t so, it’s just been lucky so far.  Humanity is not going to be able to muddle through this one as it has always done.   

The magician’s quarrel with capitalism isn’t the inherent unfairness and injustice built into it.  That’s just the way life is, the way nature is.  There’s nothing anyone can do about that.  Rather, the magician’s criticism of capitalism is that it’s about to self-destruct and drag the human race and the earth herself down with it.   

Capitalism is turning this earth into a hell world.  Insatiable greed, the basis of capitalism, is not an innate human character trait.  There have been human societies in which greed and self-indulgence were not the principle mainspring to all action.  Indeed, in spiritual societies to this day, such as the Mayan Indians, unbridled selfishness is discouraged or viewed as aberrant behavior.   

            The usual pro-capitalist argument runs that capitalism has succeeded in delivering the goods to much of the human population on earth.  And what is suggested as an alternative?   The answer to that one is that capitalism is working now (poorly), but it won’t be able to keep it up, or else the price in human misery and the destruction of the earth will become prohibitive.   

The capitalist system will change when enough people, as individuals, stop voting for it.   Just as people have learned to use possessions to prop up their lack of true self-esteem, they can unlearn this.  What I suggest as an alternative to capitalism is magic:  people listening to their hearts.  From the magical point of view possessions are actually a bring-down, a trap.  People can understand this by listening to their own hearts, not to what the media and advertisers and their peers are trying to convince them that they need and want.   

            Some people say that it is naïve to expect human nature to change.  But the basis of capitalism as it is today – unbridled selfishness and short-sighted stupidity – is not human nature.  It’s demon nature.  There was a time before humans allied themselves with demons, and not so long ago, either (12,000 years ago when agriculture was invented).   

Hunting / gathering societies to this day are not usually based upon selfishness and greed, but upon a sense of group well-being.  We modern humans have just become so imbued with the assumptions of demonism that we cannot conceive of a social order based on anything other than distrust and rapacity. 

This is because of lack of faith.  Our society has taught us that magic doesn’t exist.  Even though most people in their heart of hearts know this is untrue, still it takes a lot of inner work to overcome that doubt about magic.  If most people in our society were as focused on magic as they are on making money, magic would work very well, as it once did in many ancient societies.  However, some ancient societies based on magic turned to black magic – not that our present money-grubbing society doesn’t perform human sacrifice in order to protect oiling drilling rights, etc.  This is what tends to happen when demons are allowed to run things.   

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I recently read a book by the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto entitled The Mystery of Capital.  This is an excellent exposition of what capital is and how it is formed, with particular reference to problems faced by the urban poor in developing nations.  It occurred to me that de Soto’s conclusions wouldn’t apply to the rural poor – at least not to my Mayan Indian neighbors.  This is because they aren’t interested in money per se.  It’s not that they like being poor, but rather to them freedom is more important than money.  To the Mayans, family, religion, and maize constitute wealth.   Money is something that you scrabble around for as it is needed.  It’s not something to amass for its own sake or for a rainy day.  They use faith and reliance on God for their rainy days.  If God doesn’t come through for them, that’s life in the tropics. 

Poor people, on average, tend to be happier than rich people.  At least this is true in agrarian cultures – not in American society, where the urban poor have their poverty rubbed in their faces every day.  This is because poor people have fewer expectations than rich people.  It doesn’t take as much for them to be happy.  They find happiness in owning less rather than more, because less is what they’ve got.  They’ve learned the trick of finding happiness in the now moment, because the now moment is all they own.   Having fewer expectations implies greater happiness with what one has, rather than dwelling upon what one lacks.    

It’s hard for twenty-first century Americans to understand how it is that they don’t own possessions, but rather possessions own them.  As the poet said, when you got nothin’ you got nothin’ to lose.  This is quite true, as the Mayans understand.   

Possessions are actually alive, and like all living things they try to multiply.   Possessions voraciously demand more and more possessions.  We become the slaves of our possessions:  the more possessions we own, the more possessions we desire.  Nobody needs all the crap which most Americans have in their living rooms and kitchens, not to mention piled up in their attics, basements, and garages.   Shopping and shameless pigging out on possessions are a rather sorry substitute for true joy and fulfillment; but that’s about all many people know.   

It’s a shame that we have to spend our entire adult lives undoing the conditioning that was imposed upon us in our early childhoods.  Imagine what our society could be like if people were raised to be happy and accepting of themselves rather than robotic producer / consumers trapped in a spiral of insatiable desire and dissatisfaction.  All of our energy could be spent on creative and spiritually uplifting concerns rather than in paying tribute to our demon masters. 

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The magicians’ view of money is that human beings have been on this earth for around two million years; our species, Homo sapiens, has been around for 600,000 years; but money has only existed for 3,000 years.  Somehow or other humans got along quite well without money for most of their existence.  Therefore money must not be an indispensable prerequisite for human life to carry on.   

This is the magicians’ view of money, as contrasted with most people’s view, that money is right up there in importance with air and water.  This addresses the question, if magicians are so powerful, why ain’t they rich?  The answer is that magic, at least white magic, isn’t about making all your desires come true.  It’s about reducing your desires to a bare minimum.  To a magician, enough is enough. It’s plenty, in fact.   

            Most people’s sense of self-esteem and self-worth, feeling good about themselves, are tied up with how other people see them.  This means how much money they have, or how much approval and approbation they are getting from others, especially from people of the opposite sex.    

People’s worry about not having enough money is actually worry about not measuring up.  Their fear of not having enough money is actually fear of permitting themselves to be happy, because underneath they believe that they are not deserving of happiness.  In other words, it’s not really about money at all.  Money is just the presenting problem which obscures an underlying psychological issue of low self-esteem.   

Magicians allow themselves to be happy now, no matter how much money they have or don’t have.  They find a way to be happy in the now moment, by taking joy in the sounds of bird calls or the feeling of the breeze on their faces.  Like most people, their sense of self-worth depends upon how much they have, but magicians believe that they’ve already got it all.  At least, they’ve got everything they need.   

To become a magician, then, doesn’t mean waving a magic wand and chanting a spell and all this money comes to you.  Rather it means weaning yourself away from worrying about money by simply refusing to worry about it.  This is an act of intent.   It means putting the bills on your desk aside and looking out the window at the children playing next door, and taking joy in that one.  When you can feel happy now, money tends to take care of itself.   

            Another trick magicians use to overcome money problems is to think about their deaths.  Magicians are acutely aware of the fact that when they die, they won’t be taking their money or money worries with them.  They will, however, be taking their joy and satisfaction in a life well-lived with them.  Being a magician means being very selective about what baggage you decide to carry along with you in life.  Money and possessions and their attendant worries are burdens which most magicians find too heavy to schlep.   

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The emotional recognition in a regression is due to an actual line which connects you to the “you” in the regression. Clairvoyants see these connections as fibers of living light, but most people sense them as feelings, emotional connections.  The theory is that these fibers from other lives bind us to neurotic patterns of behavior in this one – we feel a need to keep reliving our mistakes until we get them right.  By running past lives it becomes possible to recognize these patterns, which immediately releases a lot of the energy that’s tied up in them;  i.e., it loosens the fibers between that life and this one, allowing the conscious mind to decide if it wants to do something about the patterns (instead of being dominated by them unawares).   

“We all to some extent meet again and again the same people and certainly in some cases form a kind of family of two or three or more persons who come together life after life until all passionate relations are exhausted, the child of one life the husband, wife, brother, sister of the next.  Sometimes, however, a single relationship will repeat itself, turning its revolving wheel again and again.”  - William Butler Yeats, A Vision 

            The question naturally arise as to whether these past life regressions actually are past lives, or whether the whole thing is just an exercise in imagination.  These regressions are not always factually accurate portrayals of other times and places (unless you’re very psychic);  you can interpolate anachronisms into them if you want to; moreover a life supposedly taking place in ancient Rome often looks suspiciously like something out of Cecil B. DeMille.  In other words, we obviously filter these regressions through our present-day concepts. 

            Also it is often difficult to relate to the “you” in a regression.  He or she doesn’t act and react the way you would, and so it’s hard to accept or understand in what sense that person is you; much less that you are personally responsible for all the mischief that person is doing.   

            Nonetheless there is an emotional truth in regressions that argues for their being taken seriously, no matter whether they are “real” (whatever that means) or merely figments.  The real touch in a past life regression is with the feelings that the “you” in the regression is experiencing.  There are emotional echoes – little pings of recognition – that you will know mean something to you personally, even if you are at a loss to put them into words.  For example, you often recognize the people you know from this lifetime when you encounter them in regressions by the feeling you have for them.  I first learned to feel the people around me (instead of merely react to them on a thought form level) by doing past life regressions:  understanding how I felt about them in past lives helped me to get a grip on how I really feel about them in this life. 

            It is the emotional content of these regressions which is of primary importance, not whether they are conceptually real (although my spirit guides assure me that they are no more nor less real than the life we are living now).  Nor is it important that you intellectually resolve the “meaning” of this or that life.  You just try to be aware that such-and-such a person is hurting you in this lifetime because you asked him to, to atone for what you did to him in another life;  or that your stirrings towards music, say, or agriculture reflect a valid part of your being – another life in which you were a musician or a farmer;  or that your irrational anger, joy, fears, and hopes are often quite rational and logical after all.   

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                        When you first come down the scene will be fuzzy at first.  You look at your feet, then your clothing, then your environment, to put the pieces of the picture into place.  You ask questions of the regression to connect yourself to it – to make that life vivid and bring it into focus.  For me (who is not especially psychic) regressions are rather murky;  I can’t usually make out faces clearly, nor colors unless they’re very bright.  You see the regression with your mind’s eye, but it’s more felt than seen – more like a series of emotional tableaux than a movie.  You usually only hit the high points of a given life; you don’t see all the day-to-day routine.  It’s not unlike a daydream or fantasy, except you soon realize that something other than your conscious mind is running it, and that something is your feelings.  The experience will be more or less vivid depending on how much you block it.  Don’t judge the experience (by thinking, for example, “This isn’t real – this is just my imagination!”).  Just let it happen; if you want to evaluate it, wait until it’s over.  This is not an exercise for your conscious mind, so tell your conscious mind to butt out and keep its judgments to itself. 

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                  “We manufacture whatever immortal souls we have out of the bits of difference we make by living in this world.”  - Sue Hubbell, The Sweet Bees 

The way that you build faith that your desire will indeed come true is by seeing it unfold in omens and portents.  These are dress rehearsals of your desire being realized; or at least signs that the impersonal forces of the universe are listening.  This is the difference between knowing with certainty that your desire will come true, as opposed to vaguely hoping that someday it will drop down from heaven by magic.  When you have true faith you can see it all coming together in omens and portents, and can guide it along.  You can see what you have to do now to get from here to there, instead of running around half-cocked frantically trying this and that to make your desires come true.  With true faith it’s a matter of increasing joy and confidence as you go along, instead of riding a constant roller coaster of inflated hopes and crushing disappointments, and repeating the same stupid errors over and over.  True faith is never blind.  It’s based on having seen positive results in the past. 

It is best to cast a spell or perform a ritual during a planetary hour propitious for the purpose of that spell or ritual.*  However planetary hours are merely a help, not a necessity.  Once you have found a propitious time to cast your spell, you must consider the form that it will take.  Write down ahead of time exactly what you want, so that you don’t forget anything when the time comes.  However, it’s best not to be too specific in what you’re asking for, such as to win the lottery, or to have such-and-such a person fall in love with you.  It’s best just to ask for wealth, or love from some unnamed person.  Let the Spirit handle the details – it knows what it’s doing.   

            I usually cast spells at power places or power trees, but you can make an altar in a corner of a room.  Prepare your altar with something that symbolizes the Spirit above it.  This can be a picture of Jesus if you’re a Christian, or just a cut-out picture of an eye, or whatever symbolizes the Spirit for you.  Put a stick of sweet-smelling incense on the altar, and a candle whose color symbolizes what you’re asking for:  green for money, pink for love, white for health or spiritual illumination, and so forth.  Also put on the altar objects which symbolize what you want:  money if you want money; cut-out pictures of lovers if you want love; pictures of healthy, active people if you want health, and so forth. 

            Just prior to the chosen time light the incense.  Then, at the precise moment chosen for the spell, light the candle.  Then call upon the Spirit to grant your wish.  It’s okay to read it, but you should do this with feeling – true longing for whatever it is that you want.  Picture in your mind’s eye your desire coming true as you call for it, and let yourself feel all the joy you would feel if your desire came true.  Don’t worry about whether you are doing it right.  If you’re doing it in good faith with true longing, then you’re doing it right. 

            Watch the candle closely for an omen of how your wish will go.  If it is difficult to light the candle, then it will be difficult to make your wish come true.  If the flame wavers or dies, then the wish probably won’t materialize.  If the flame burns tall and brightly, then the wish will come true.  However if the candle should fall over, forget it.   Also watch for unusual occurrences while you are casting your spell:  for example, the sudden appearance of singing birds (if you are outside) or shafts of sunlight suddenly appearing through the clouds.  These sorts of things are good omens for your wish coming true.   

If you don’t feel comfortable with all the ritual, you can dispense with it.  The ritual is just for your own sake, to lend a sense of importance and ceremony to the occasion – not to impress the Spirit.  The only things of importance are to cast your spell with true longing, at a propitious time.            

            When you finish casting the spell, leave the area and let the incense and candle burn down.  Then dismantle the altar and dispose of what’s left of the candle and incense by burying them.  Once a spell has been cast there’s no need to repeat it unless you feel your own resolve weakening and want to strengthen it.  Be assured that spells carried out in good faith always work, so don’t waste them on anything frivolous, since then you’re committed to it.  Be sure you really want what you’re asking for.

*Complete instructions on how to use Planetary Hours, with tables, can be downloaded for free from www.dearbrutus.com  => Makransky Miscellany => Astrology Articles => Planetary Hours.

More of Bob Makransky’s articles are posted at:  www.dearbrutus.com  

Subscribe to Bob Makransky’s free monthly ezine at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MagicalAlmanac

Curses are the same thing as prayers, but with a negative intent.   Because curses are the product of our fellow humans, they are much more difficult to cast off than are demons.  Our fellow humans are far more ornery and vexing than are demons, who are relatively straightforward and aboveboard by comparison.  My benefactress, who is a priestess of the nine Mayan gods, has told me that curses should be removed by a professional, not attempted alone if you don’t know what you’re doing.  She removes curses as follows:    

You can’t do it without prayer.   Say whatever prayer is appropriate to your faith – e.g. you could use the Our Father – into each radial pulse three times while burning copal (or any acrid incense, such as patchouli) around the person.  Then say it three times over the forehead.  You may have to repeat these nine prayers a few times until you feel the pulse calm down.  You also need a spiritual bath with various herbs.  We use nine for this:  pipers, marigold, rue, life everlasting, all collected with prayers of thanksgiving and faith.  Mash all the leaves in a bucket of water and set it in sun for a few hours.   When the person comes, say the prayers, burn the copal and bathe their aura and physical body with the bath water. 

I’ve had curses put on me, more than once in fact, in the course of some unfortunate run-ins with a black witch.   After smoking cigarettes for many years I eventually developed a constant emphysematous cough which no doctor I went to could help me with.  Finally I went to a Huichol shaman in Mexico who asked me to give him a candle to burn at night, to see if he could find the answer to my problem in a dream.  The next morning he told me that he had seen that someone – he didn’t know who, but I did – had put a curse on me.  The curse had resided in my weakest place, my lungs.  The shaman had me return to him several times, each time making passes over my body with feathers.  He prayed and sucked something out of the top of my head and spit it into his fireplace.  He gave me a decoction of herbs and peyote to drink, and prescribed a special cleansing diet for a week.   On my last visit he had me open my right palm and placed a cross in it, and then had me clasp my left hand over it.  At that instant a glass with a candle burning in it on the altar behind us shattered with a loud “CRACK!” and I knew at that moment that the curse had left me.   

It is often said that creative visualization and prayer should be done with the certain conviction that your desire is already realized:  that what you’re visualizing or praying for is already true.  The question arises, how can you fervently believe that your desire is true when the overwhelming physical evidence is to the contrary?  For example, how can you convince yourself that you are in radiant good health when all the logical signs point to your dying of cancer? 

In casting spells, or making prayers or doing creative visualizations, which are all basically the same thing, what we are trying to do is to coax a sense of abundance from within ourselves.  We look out at the exact same landscape that we are seeing now – of being impoverished, or lonely, or sick – and yet we try to find meaning, worth, and purpose in it.  Trying to conjure up a sense of fulfillment and self-worth in the midst of misery is a trick of magic.  It isn’t easy, but it can be done.   Is this lying to oneself?   No more so than believing that God is going to wave His magic wand and take away all our troubles.   

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